Second Amendment Rights and the Constitution

There is an excellent article in the Weekly Standard by Erin Sheley concerning Parker v. District of Columbia, the D.C. circuit case interpreting the Second Amendment in a reasonable sort of way. As the article has pointed out, judges don’t like the Second Amendment. While they are generous in interpreting constitutional clauses they like and even inventing clauses for the Constitution that you cannot find in the text, judges have been extremely stingy in enforcing the right to bear arms. Part of the reason is that the Second Amendment is not like many of the other amendments to the Constitution. It actually says, “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” Notice anything unusual? The amendment does not purport to create a right to bear arms; instead it recognizes one and gives an additional reason for that right not being infringed.

When the Constitution was enacted, the framers already believed in what we would call natural rights and/or natural law. They believed that God had given mankind certain rights which governments were not to infringe. Among the rights recognized traditionally as flowing from natural law within reformed Christianity was the right and obligation to defend others. Defending others, of course, if it’s to be done effectively, necessitates arms and the existence of government to facilitate the coordination of that defense. Natural rights scholars, by contrast, emphasize a right to self defense. While this is, in a sense, less biblical, it has the same result in indicating that people ought to be entitled to the means necessary to defend themselves.

During the English revolutionary period, the people of England deposed and beheaded one king and deposed a second king in part because they sought to interfere with the right of people to bear arms. They made their new king and queen, William and Mary of Orange, sign a declaration of rights that essentially recognized that their predecessors in the crown had been wrong in seeking to disarm the people, especially during a time of crisis. The founders of the United States were well aware of the understanding of common law in England, that there was a right to bear arms. They knew that this was a right of the people, not a right of the state or the collective. But they also knew that in the peaceful society that they imagined, there might be a temptation to think that the right to bear arms was less necessary than it would be in a government with a greater propensity to tyranny. Perhaps this is why they gave a reason for the government’s obligation to avoid infringing the pre-existing right to bear arms. They reasoned that a well-regulated militia was necessary to the security of a free state. Today we don’t have militias in the sense that the founders meant. We do not call up all able-bodied men to fight on behalf of the state. We wouldn’t expect them to bring their own firearms even if we did. But it is still true that people have a need to defend others, and that the state cannot always be the guarantor of our safety. As a result, we still have a natural law right to bear arms. This right is explicitly recognized by the Second Amendment. In fact, I think that there is a good argument that it is also one of the sort of pre-existing rights recognized in the Ninth Amendment, the provision of the Bill of Rights that says, “The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” The Supreme Court held some time ago that the right of travel, for example, clearly recognized in the Middle Ages and Magna Carta, is one of the rights protected by the Ninth Amendment. If the Second Amendment didn’t protect the right to bear arms, the Ninth Amendment clearly would. It is a well-known and long held common law right and if the government took away our right to defend others or ourselves by owning weapons that are reasonable for that purpose, it would be doing us a grave disservice and injustice.

Bravo to the D.C. court for getting this one right. Let’s hope that the Supreme Court of the United States eventually does likewise.

Book Review: Stephen Grabill's Book Rediscovering the Natural Law in Reformed Theologiocal Ethics

Until fairly recently, Protestants in the last fifty years have neglected their historic roots in natural law theory. Protestant Christian jurisprudential writers have preferred secular philosophies of law like American realism and pragmatism to the legal philosophy held by the Reformers. In fact, to a large extent Protestants in the last fifty years have ignored what the Reformers had to say about law or political philosophy. Stephen Grabill attempts in this noble book, Rediscovering the Natural Law in Reformed Theological Ethics, to explain some of the reasons why recent Protestants have avoided natural law and exactly what Calvin and some of his most noted successors actually believed about natural law.

In his conclusion, Grabill discusses the gradual slide of scholars away from natural law theory. As empiricism and skepticism grew and belief in Augustinianism and the classic understanding of Reformed epistemology diminished, Protestants became increasingly vulnerable to sophisticated philosophical attack in the areas of law and epistemology. While Grabill does not discuss the next phase much in his book, the rise of skepticism succeeded in pummeling many Protestant Christians into pietism and anti-intellectualism during the 1800 and 1900s. Grabill does discuss Karl Barth’s contribution to the loss of natural law awareness. Barth, in substituting a false but spiritual sounding nonsense for the philosophy of higher criticism, convinced many people that in adopting his rejection of God’s general revelation they were being very biblical and very Protestant despite the fact that they were rejecting both what the Bible says about natural law and the beliefs of most of the Christian church prior to 1950. Barth confidently claimed that Calvin himself did not believe in natural law although anyone who actually reads portions of Calvin’s Institutes dealing with these issues can easily see that Calvin did believe in natural law. But Barth’s popularity was such that he swayed many people toward his side and also promulgated the belief that natural law was a Roman Catholic doctrine rather than a Christian doctrine. Grabill goes through much of the history of prominent natural law thinking within Reformed Protestantism. He discusses the views not only of John Calvin but of Peter Martyr Vermigli (1499-1562), Johannes Althusius (1557-1638), Jerome Zanchi (1516-1590), Francis Turretin (1623-1687) and others. Most of these important second and third generation Reformers believed in natural law.

These various Reformed theologians had slight differences in their theories of natural law and their understandings of its application, but they had a great deal of agreement as well. Grabill summarizes it this way: “Calvin, Vermigli, and Reformed scholastics all share the conviction that Scripture is the cognitive foundation (principium cognoscendi) of theology and that moral arguments can be based on axioms derived from that principium. Consequently they recognize the existence of a natural knowledge of God that is present in the natural order and discernable either in conjunction with or apart from Scripture. This knowledge, however, has no saving efficacy and merely serves to render all people to be ‘without excuse’ for their moral infractions, as Romans 1:20 attests.” The Reformers agreed that knowledge of right and wrong didn’t cause you to do what was right or cause you to be saved. But they did believe that God has not left Himself without witnesses. In addition to the direct and superior testimony of Scripture, God has also revealed Himself by writing the law on our hearts - a law that is very much the same as the principles behind the Ten Commandments. These Reformed scholars were also Augustinian in their epistemology. They recognized that God makes human knowledge, thought, and language possible, in addition to providing us with a moral compass.

Grabill does not go into depth in discussing the political and legal implications of natural law philosophy and its accompanying Augustinian epistemology. I would argue that our Western understanding of law, the rule of law, and the proper nature of jurisprudence, were originally based on the same presuppositions held by the Reformed theologians discussed by Grabill. Men like Richard Hooker and Coke, who shaped the theory and practice of the common law, understood that men were fallen, sinful and not to be trusted to reason or act properly. But they also understood that God had endowed man with the ability to learn language and communicate in a practical way, with an ability to understand universals like justice, goodness, truth, property, beauty, etc. and with a basic knowledge of good and evil in addition to providing man with the ability to reason, albeit an ability damaged by the fall. The way Western law developed presumes all of these things.

The current emphasis in post-modernism and pragmatism on our inability to communicate or know anything objective about right or wrong is changing the meaning of the phrase “the rule of law” and rending the fabric of American law filament by filament. If Christian legal scholars want to reform the American legal system, they must do more than carry it a few decades back up the slippery slope down which it has slipped, and instead restore the theological and philosophical foundations upon which a proper legal system is built. Stephen Grabill’s book is a wonderful step in that direction. I hope and pray that we will see many more similar works appearing in print in the relatively near future.

Movie Review: Amazing Grace

I went to see Amazing Grace on its opening weekend. I was glad I did. It was an extraordinary film with excellent acting, costuming, locations and story.

Amazing Grace is the story of William Wilberforce and his work to abolish the slave trade in the British Empire. Wilberforce was a very interesting man on the human level, and worked for civility in politics and humane treatment of animals in addition to his political work against slavery. He was not always right about everything. He did not completely foresee the danger of Napoleon or the futility of negotiating with Napoleon during the wars between England and France. But Wilberforce was a great man who succeeded in convincing England to end the slave trade and eventually to end slavery itself.

The film has a variety of flashbacks and can be a bit confusing to people who don’t know something about the history or story line in advance or who are inattentive to the hints and clues given in the early parts of the film. One of the critical supports to Wilberforce is his own school teacher, John Newton. Newton had been a slave trader and upon converting to Christianity, gave up the trade. Nevertheless, he was haunted throughout his life with the memories and images of the brutality he had participated in. Newton became a clergyman and was also the author of the famous hymn, Amazing Grace.

Also important in Wilberforce’s life were the Clapham Circle—friends who supported abolition and did research toward that end, his extended family, and his wife. The romance between Wilberforce and his wife-to-be is a prominent feature of the movie, and shows the tremendous difference that a good marriage can make in the lives of individuals who are seeking to serve God in stressful fields.

The film also conveys something of the wisdom Wilberforce eventually obtained in dealing with political problems. He learned that sometimes a direct assault is not the best way to achieve political goals. Instead, they can sometimes be achieved incrementally through measures designed to have indirect effects that will make more radical change possible later on.

Unquestionably, Wilberforce is one of the most important figures in the history of the West. His efforts at political and moral reform in England were of the greatest importance. The end of the English slave trade also contributed to making it possible for America to end the slave trade and eventually abolish slavery here as well. Christians today should study Wilberforce and take lessons from his failures and successes as they too seek to influence society by limiting evil and promoting good.

It is not possible for Christians to transform earth into heaven. It is not even possible to eliminate all corruption from politics. But it is possible to work for the good and to eliminate some institutions such as slavery. The Bible instructs us to not only share the Gospel with our neighbors, but to free those who are oppressed and to help those who are hungry, thirsty and impoverished. Politics is not always the best way to achieve these goals, but it does serve a contributing part, particularly in ending oppression. William Wilberforce is an excellent example for us of how to bring about lasting and significant political change.

The Selfishness of Pacifism

While I have some respect for pacifists because of their commitment to an ideal many of them believe is biblical, I have recently been re-reading a book of views about war and I have been impressed by the overall selfishness of pacifist and non-resistant positions. Constantly, people with pacifist or non-resistant positions toward war talk about themselves and their enemies. They constantly focus on how they will respond to the enemy, what they will do, what they feel, what they think, what God thinks of them, and what God requires of them. Nowhere in the articles about just war or non-resistant positions do I see people thinking about the victims of aggressive totalitarian regimes. I think the real question involved in the morality of war is not whether we are going to fight back ourselves, but whether we are going to protect others. If it was just a matter of the defender and the attacker, the defender might be justified in turning the other cheek and not resisting evil. But it isn’t like that at all. In the situation of war, we have many people who are being attacked by the aggressor (or in the case of a preventive war, who would have been attacked by the aggressor if the aggressor hadn’t been attacked first). War theory has to think about these third party innocents, not just about the belligerents. In discussing whether or not it was right to fight the Nazis, we have to take into account the Holocaust and the atrocities against the Poles and others. In deciding whether or not war is right in general, we have to think about the third party victims of unrestrained aggressive regimes.

Prepare for refugees

Following the American re-deployment and drawdown from Viet Nam, thousands of people fled for their lives from Viet Nam. Many who did not flee were executed, imprisoned or sent to re-education camps. Many spent years after the fall of Saigon attempting to get out of Viet Nam and come to the United States. If American forces leave Iraq prematurely, the result is likely to be similar or worse.

If American retreats from Iraq and surrenders it as a theater in the war against Islamo-Fascism, all of the people in Iraq who strongly supported democracy, a moderate understanding of Islam, and freedom for women and religious minorities as well as everyone who is not a Muslim will be in danger for their lives. If the United States intends to withdraw as the Congress appears to be preparing to force the president to do through a web of binding and harassing laws and resolutions designed to prevent the effective continuance of the war in Iraq, then we must either prepare ourselves to watch hundreds of thousands of people be massacred, or to accept them here in the United States as political refugees.

Why Federalism is not Enough

Recently one of the early candidates for president has said that he has switched from being pro-abortion to being pro-life. But news articles report that he bases his “pro-life” stance on federalism. He says that he believes that abortion is a matter for state legislatures rather than for the federal courts. This is still a problematic view. From the standpoint of a really pro-life position, there should be no right to abortion because unborn human beings are human beings and all human beings have an unalienable right not to be killed with malice aforethought and without justification or excuse. While supporting a federalist view of the problem or any regulations on abortion may be desirable incremental steps, the fundamental philosophical change which we need is recognition of the rights of all human beings at all stages of development.

At conception, a living egg and a living sperm come together to form a living human being - the kind of thing made in the image of God. Humans, even when very small, are due dignity, respect, and fundamental rights from the moment of conception onward. Even the body of a dead human being is entitled to a certain degree of respect, though not the degree of respect accorded to a living human being.

Until jurisprudence catches up with this scientific and moral reality, abortion will continue to distort American law and justice. The existence of a legal doctrine in which we decide that some human beings are not entitled to the protections of the law because they are at a particular stage of development or do not evidence particular characteristics is a delegitimizing factor weighing against the overall legitimacy of America’s regime and legal system. Until we fix this problem, we are going to continue to have difficulties as a nation and as a people. Devaluing human life always has consequences even though they are not always directly understood or observed.

Good News from D.C. - Republicans on House Judiciary Committee Protect Presidential Powers

There are some things you never hear about in the news media. One is when the Republicans actually do something right and show up the Democrats. This happened recently in the House Judiciary Committee. The Democrats were planning on hearings to savagely attack presidential signing statements. Signing statements are explanations of the president’s view of a bill given when the president signs the bill into law. The statement might say what the president believes the bill is designed to do, give the president’s opinions on the mischiefs the bill is designed to combat, or indicate how a vague portion of the new law is meant to be interpreted, or even say that the president expects a portion of the law to be declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. Some legislators hate presidential signing statements because they form a competing intent behind the bill. One of the major accusations his opponents have had against President Bush is that he has issued many signing statements.

The Democrats on the Judiciary Committee did not prepare well for their hearing. The hearing was designed to attack signing statements and they had witnesses lined up to complain about the practice. What they did not really do was look into the long-term history of signing statements. The Republicans did do that and came prepared. The Republicans laid out that presidents had been issuing signing statements regularly since the time of Andrew Jackson. It is not a new practice or a practice unique to Republican presidents.

Hooray for the Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee! In this instance they undermined the Democrats’ attempts to create a constitutional crisis by enacting legislation designed to change presidential powers without amending the Constitution.

Movie Review: Miss Potter

Last week I had the opportunity to see the delightful film, “Miss Potter.” Miss Potter is the story of the author of Peter Rabbit and other well-known children’s stories. Beatrix Potter not only wrote the stories, but painted the illustrations herself. She was also unusually involved in overseeing just how the books were put into print. Her children’s books became the best selling children’s books in history. And, Beatrix Potter also became a major conserver of farmland in the lakes district of northwestern England.

The film is a picture of a large portion of Miss Potter’s life. It is essentially a biographical film. It contains tragedy and sadness as well as triumph and success. It also has a great deal of humor and romance. The acting in the film is excellent and Renee Zellweger does an outstanding job of portraying the endearing but somewhat eccentric Miss Potter. The costuming, scenery, furniture and locations are also done with care and perfection. It gives us a window into the whole Victorian world with its odd class system and opportunities.

The movie is not really a children’s film because of the subtle sophistication of the humor and story and the presence of great tragedy. There is also a possibility that children will misunderstand and misapply a “carpe diem” (seize the day) lesson from the film. This film is extraordinary in that it contains nothing that is really bad or objectionable compared to the vast majority of modern films. It is exactly the sort of film that Christians are always saying people should make (apart from its not containing any overt elements of faith or Christianity). It is a sweet, delightful movie and I really congratulate everyone involved with it on their courage in making such a wonderful film and not trying to add strange, post-modern elements to it. There are a couple of moments that I think people might attempt to misinterpret and use to insert their own notions. But they are moments that are certainly possible in the Victorian world and would not have carried any extra baggage at that time. They would have simply been innocent and natural.

The film also involves a kind and gentle father and a mother who is overly ambitious for her daughter’s social standing. The film is a true-to-life depictions of the world in which Miss Potter lived.

God and Governing: A Conference on Ethics, Virtue, and Statesmanship

Trinity International Universities' California Campus is putting on a conference on Ethics and Government. The text bellow, taken from the Trinity site describes the reason for the conference. An ad for the conference appeared in Christianity Today and other magazines this February. Go to www.tls.edu/conference for additional information.

Evangelical Christians and Politics
According to the news media, evangelical Christianity obtained an unparalleled level of political power in Washington, D.C., during the last fifteen years. Newspaper and magazine editors have warned of "theocracy" and of the coming of a regime of oppressive Christian morality. But, not only have these warnings not been justified, evangelicals themselves have been disappointed with the ineffectiveness of their political contacts in Washington.
Professed friends of the so-called "religious right" have been caught up in ethical scandals. Leaders associated with evangelical Christianity in the popular mind have alienated many people through their intemperate statements and actions. Despite claims of evangelical power, little or no progress has been made upon implementing the perceived agenda of evangelical Christians on moral issues such as abortion, embryonic stem cell research, bioethics, the protection of the family, care for the poor, ending international religious persecution, securing educational freedom, and caring for the weak and powerless among us. Instead, many voices claim that evangelicals have been used and manipulated for their votes and money without policy makers having any real intention of following through on their promises to the evangelical community.
Appropriate Christian Involvement
We know from the Scripture that we must not place too much hope in human governments. The interests of the kingdom of God are furthered by the preaching of the Gospel and by discipleship, not by the work of government. But the Scripture does command us to seek justice, to love our neighbor as ourselves, to seek freedom for the oppressed and liberty for the captive, to rescue those being led away to death, and to stand up for the powerless and the widow and orphan. These biblical injunctions would seem to encourage some political involvement, especially in a republic.
But why, if evangelicals have really been so powerful, have they been so ineffective in helping the poor and oppressed? Why has it been difficult to achieve reasonable limited results?
Practical Answers
This conference on God and Governing seeks real practical answers to these questions. We do not gather to condemn all Christian calling to statesmanship and politics, nor do we gather to validate the false claim that the kingdom of God can be brought in through the work of human governments. Instead, we seek to discuss the practical ways in which Christians can execute their duty to love their neighbor and help the oppressed, in the context of politics, with greater effectiveness and greater glory to Jesus Christ.
At the God and Governing Conference, which is being held at the Westin Hotel South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa, California, major figures from the Christian world of ideas will wrestle with this difficult topic. In addition to the major presentations and speeches by the likes of Os Guinness, Dallas Willard, David Wells, Paul Marshall, Vishal Mangalwadi, and Stephen Kennedy, there will be critiques and discussions by panel members who will include pastors, lawyers, and Christian professors.
This opportunity for finding and renewing a commitment to mature character, virtue, and just purposes in Christian involvement in politics should not be missed by Christian leaders who have an interest in political or media affairs. At the edge of the presidential primary season, this conference is provocatively timed relevant to the questions Christians will need to be asking as they go to the polls and if they go to Washington.
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Is War the Enemy?

One of my friends was recently having a discussion with me about the Iraq War. In this discussion I talked about the terrible situation in which the rise of Islamo-Fascism threatens the entire world. But my friend wanted to insist that Islamo-Fascism is merely an illusion and a matter for law enforcement rather than a matter for military action or diplomacy on a massive scale. Instead, he’s very worried about the American military and its power. He said, “To my way of thinking, war is the enemy.”

War is the enemy? I didn’t say much at the time but it occurred to me that this is something like saying “surgery is the enemy.” After all, tens of thousands of people around the world die in surgery every year. Even when successful, surgery causes immense pain and suffering. Surgery frequently has lasting unpleasant side effects. But would we all be better off without surgery? No, because there is something worse. Surgery is how we fight certain kinds of disease. War is really the same sort of thing. If we decided that when any resolute and armed group of people desire to loot, rape and pillage some other part of the world, we would merely let them do whatever they wanted to their heart’s content, there would be no wars. But there would be something worse. There are actually some things worse than war. While there are some wars in which groups mutually bent on pillage fight it out between each other, and while it is also true that civilizations are never perfect or holy, it is often the case that wars occur between one armed group bent on pillaging and enslaving another and a group that is resisting being looted and pillaged. America has been involved on behalf of other countries that are the target of looting and enslavement. To come to the aid of others in this situation is extremely biblical. The entire Bible is full of injunctions to aid those that are oppressed. None of this is to say that war is not painful or difficult, but rather to say that in a fallen world, it is a necessary tool.

I don’t think that my friend is alone though. There are many people who somehow believe that war is a sort of force or thing or entity that compels people to desire greater armaments and to waste their time and effort and resources in pursuing marshal pleasures. But I don’t think that is a realistic view of the world. Totalitarian regimes do occasionally stir up a desire for marshal ardor. And in truth, there is nothing wrong with honoring the just warrior—the valiant knight who protects the interests of the poor, the powerless, the oppressed, and the suffering. The happy warrior is deservedly happy, provided he is a warrior for good rather than for ill.

I suspect that my friend’s misconception arises not really from a belief that war is a mysterious force that robs people of their reason, but rather from a belief that human beings are basically good and are somehow manipulated by their environment or the greed of others into making foolish choices. I think he believes that war is always one of those choices which should be deemed foolish. Undoubtedly he probably believes that if we just gave dictators a little bribery money and treated them with the dignity and respect due to their megalomania, they would live happily with their neighbors and not need to be checked by armed forces. Sadly, I do not think this is the way the world really is. While no human being is perfect or sinless or entirely altruistic, the world is full of people who suffer not merely from run-of-the-mill temptations but from desires more contrary to the will of God and the best interests of their neighbors. This has been true since ancient times when the Bible discusses “Nimrod” who translations often describe as a mighty hunter before the Lord but whose context would seem to say that he was a mighty warrior against the Lord (to the degree one can struggle against a sovereign God). Islamo-Fascism is merely the latest in thousands of years of movements dedicated to bad ideas and forcing those bad ideas on as many human beings as possible. The study of these movements needs to be based not upon wishful thinking or upon the propaganda that they provide to the West, but rather upon an examination of their own ideology and literature. There is plenty of that available to the public and plenty of analysis of that ideology and literature is available as well.

My friend would probably think that the pentagon is full of the very sort of “Nimrods” described above. But that is not my experience. Nearly all of the people in the “military industrial complex” that I have met, or known about second hand, or known from their writings, have been very decent virtuous individuals who really did want peace and justice and liberty under the rule of law etc.

My friend is also concerned that war endangers civil rights. There are certainly some domestic dangers in the fight against Islamo-Fascism. I do worry that because Islamo-Fascism is based upon a sort of fundamentalist religion, the struggle against it will result in a backlash against Christians who genuinely believe in the Bible and the truths of Christianity. I also do have concerns about how our constitutional liberties could be usurped in the name of homeland security and secrecy if the focus of the war changes from offense against Islamo-Fascists to a defensive cordon of security around every one of the millions of possible targets in the United States. But I do not believe that either of these risks is worse than the risks of not fighting Islamo-Fascism itself. This is a case in which the cancer requires surgery or it will kill the patient in the long run long before the patient’s life would naturally expire. And this surgery requires not only a war of weapons, but a war of ideas in which truth is brandished as the greatest weapon of all.

Is the Golden Thread in Danger?

I am a habitual frequenter of English blogs. I have seen hints on a number of them to the effect that Prime Minister Tony Blair has made disparaging remarks about the "golden thread of English jurisprudence": the notion that a person is innocent until proven guilty. It is said that the golden thread goes back to Justice Matthew Hale, and perhaps even to an earlier date with certain canon law commentators. It is undoubtedly one of the most important due process provisions in Anglo-American law. It would be quite distressing if anyone suggested that people should be considered guilty until proven innocent. I have been unable to find any solid news on this matter. Do any of you readers know if it is true that Blair has threatened to eliminate the provision that people are innocent until proven guilty, or is this merely an urban legend?

Lawmakers Seek to Revive So Called Fairness Doctrine

Washington these days is full of the most bizarre double speak. Democrats seek to censor and destroy viewpoints they don’t agree with through laws that they say require fairness and balance. Since when is censorship and destruction fairness and balance?

The radical left is deeply unhappy because the old media—newspapers and television networks—are still dominated by the classically liberal center left. While they are happy to constantly savage the president and grind away at the war in Iraq, they still do not tell the lies and tall tales that originate from the international socialist movement and the lunatic fringe of left-wing American politics. From the point of view of the radical left, it is not nearly enough that the major news networks never tell the stories of heroes in Iraq or explain that Iraq is a kill zone designed to draw Al Qaeda terrorists from around the world, fix their position, and kill them in a place far away from the United States, the media can only please the radical left by also claiming that Iraq is a war for corporate profit and that the United States is more brutal than Sadam Hussein (both extreme lies). The left is also upset because conservative talk radio shows like Sean Hannity, Hugh Hewitt, Laura Ingram, Michael Medved, and Rush Limbaugh eloquently express morally conservative and libertarian Burkian and right-wing populist thought so effectively and in such an entertaining way that they succeed in persuading millions of Americans. But talk radio merely counter balances the classic center-left media whose voice is far more pervasive and loud. This is to say nothing of Hollywood and the left-wing movies, television programs and rock albums that propagandize unwitting Americans as they think they are merely being entertained. The left also fails to take into account the way in which they consistently brainwash youth through the public education system. Public education encourages students to believe in scientifically weak ideas such as the notion that human beings are causing global warming, to believe in politically ridiculous ideas like the claim that the C.I.A. and the Defense Department run the American government, and to believe in personally ridiculous ideas like the notion that President Bush, a Harvard Business School graduate who flew the difficult and somewhat dangerous F106 Delta Dagger for the international Guard, is both stupid and cowardly. The left is never happy with merely having everyone moderately on their side. They want everyone to be spouting the tall tales invented by radical spokesmen who seek to further the agendas of every left-wing totalitarian regime in history through whatever means they believe will work to bring about class warfare, social revolution, and the elimination of orthodox Christian faith and western civilization as we know it. These radicals do not believe in objective moral truth or even objective reality and have no problem merely making things up because they believe that is what everyone does.

The Fairness Doctrine is not an attempt at fairness. It is an attempt at destroying conservative talk radio and any real fairness or balance now in existence. Requiring conservative talk shows or conservative news shows to respond to complaints by left-wing activists and to give the activists equal time will make the shows boring and difficult to listen to. Once the shows are less entertaining and less economically viable, they will disappear. Left-wing shows are already not entertaining and not economically viable or there would be many of them competing with the current conservative talk shows. There really is a marketplace in ideas and people aren’t buying left-wing ideas because they aren’t rational, don’t make sense, and exhibit neither conformity to reality nor a healthy sense of humor. I only hope that the proposal for the renewal of the old Fairness Doctrine is laughed out of town.

California Proposes Law Against Spanking Young Children

Assemblywoman Sally Lieber of Mountain View has said that she is going to introduce legislation in the California Assembly to make it a crime to spank children under three years of age (hat-tip to Rantburg, Frank Pastore's radio program and PJI). Ms. Lieber believes that she is prohibiting child abuse and her comments to the press show that she does not know the difference between spanking as corporal punishment and “whipping” or “hitting.”

I can certainly understand that the legislature has a legitimate interest in preventing actual child abuse. As for actual child abuse, there are already laws outlawing it. It is not necessary to ban all spanking of young children. And there is a certain relative stage of development below which children should not be subjected to actual corporal punishment. Infants should not be spanked. But spanking is a legitimate and important part of child rearing. The state has no business interfering with legitimate corporal punishment that does not physically damage the child and is rightly considered to be morally efficacious by a large number of parents.

A gentle swat on the bottom of a child is often necessary to create a conditioned response to dangerous actions such as running toward the street, stepping in front of cars, failing to stop and come when called, or putting hands near dangerously hot or cold objects. A child between one and three cannot easily be reasoned with regarding a dangerous activity, but will understand and remember that a mild swat was obtained when he or she started to engage in that activity and was scolded by the parent. This sort of conditioning is a vital part of good parenting. In addition, there are times when children, especially between the ages of one and three, engage in deliberate defiance of parental authority. During these rare occasions, a gentle spanking is far more efficacious than other measures. In fact, many measures which are attractive to pacifist child rearers are mentally damaging by contrast to mild corporal punishment.

I suspect that a major reason for this sort of legislation is a common and erroneous understanding of moral principles. On the one hand, there are people who are not willing to accept moral restraint. These people demand the freedom to engage in activities that are destructive to themselves and to other people in society. Criminals, terrorists, or totalitarian dictators and their apologists clearly fall within this category. Some radical libertarians enter into the fringes of this category. At the opposite extreme are people who do not understand how morality works in a fallen world. In a world in which human beings engage in evil acts by choice, violence is occasionally not only necessary but good. It can be an instrumentality of resistance against evil. But the pacifists who reject all use of force seek to ban all violence of any type by any person for any reason. They do not understand that violence must be used to restrain evil. Instead they think that by banning all violence, they will succeed in preventing evil. What actually happens is that actively evil people continue to engage in violence and the pacifists hinder those that would oppose evil with good. But people who do not understand genuine morality from a Christian perspective have trouble understanding and sorting out why some violence is legitimate and other violence is wrong. If you don’t believe in good and evil, you can’t come up with a justification why it is sometimes acceptable to kill people and other times not. But through the Bible and natural law, God has revealed to us some appropriate level of force is sometimes necessary to discipline children, to restrain evildoers, and to punish those who engage in evil acts. Unwillingness to sort these things out is not moral but rather slovenly and destructive.

I believe that this anti-spanking legislation is an arch typical example of the kind of moral confusion I am discussing. But I also think that it is a violation of parental rights. Parents have a right to reasonably discipline their children. This is a fundamental right with which the state has no business interfering. It should be regarded as unconstitutional under the Ninth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution as applied to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment. It clearly interferes with the traditional privileges of parenting.

Roe v. Wade: Dark Anniversary

This is the 30 year anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Roe is one of the worst decisions ever made by any court on the planet in the entire history of mankind – a decision for which much of the nation and most urban attorneys are still unrepentant. Roe and its’ companion case, Doe v. Bolton, created the existing regime of abortion on demand for any reason, at any stage of pregnancy, without significant regulation. As Amherst Philosopher Hadley Arkes has pointed out in his excellent book Natural Rights and the Right to Choose Roe has warped the entire American political context. Until the Roberts court, our courts ignored their own rules on ripeness, standing, statutory interpretation, and genuine cases and controversies to quickly invalidate statutes limiting even the most obviously immoral abortions. Our politicians have ignored morality, science, and the popular will in order to maintain the killing of millions of babies to the hurt of the country and the worsening of many social ills. Our media have turned their backs on the pretense of investigation and truth telling to become propagandists for the abortion industry at any cost. For the sake of cheap sex without consequences or significance our people have ignored the proper laws of God and man and hardened their hearts against their own offspring.

Oh unhappy day of death and shame,
Dead heart and conscience lamed,
Baser passions a god enthroned,
Powerless lives like grass mowed,
Darkest motives hidden deep,
And leviathan lies tight to keep.
May God this evil day amend,
And right restore before the end,
Least judgment withering send
Ignition into our chaff land
And Justice slay the best of hope,
Who purity left low in their day.